DB

Dear Bill,

Hey, what's up! I know you're real busy innovating and stuff, but I felt like I should drop you a line 'cause ... well, to be frank you guys have been annoying me lately.

1. Who was that Stuart McKee guy at the Massachusetts meeting. He sound like a press release; did he think this was just going to be the usual press-conference-type deal where uninformed reporters diligently write down your buzzword-rife gibberish and then applaud. He said this

"we commend the efforts, frankly, to use XML, we think ... uh, SOA Service Oriented Achitectures and data interoperability are incredibly important for the connected world has permeated everything we do. You know, we feel very fortunate that over the last 25 years technology -- personal technology in particular -- has changed the way we live, work and play. It's been a privelege for us to be a part of that.

This was in response (I use the term loosely) to James Palo making the excellent point that XML is not a sufficient guarantor of data availability all by its lonesome, about which I commented earlier.

2. Did one of your guys actually say that Nigerians weren't much concerned about spending a couple years' salary on each copy of windows and office that they need? One of your Nigerian guys?

I'm usually not one of those people that raves about you being doomed, but man this is a pretty weird thing to say and you should look to it.

Love,
Matt

PS: You should try this new browser. Might give you some ideas for IE8? I'm guessing that'll take about 4 years, like IE7 did? Let me know.